Ufsdump question

[hornetbloke]

As someone who's not had to use ufsdump before I'm a little confused. On reading the manpage it says that filesystems should be unmounted before a level 0 dump is done although what happens if I need to dump the root partition on a critical server that cannot be brought down?
Does anyone here do level 0 dumps on a mounted partition and what is their feedback on this solution? Am I better off just using tar/cpio?
All comments gratefully appreciated.

 

[KenCunningham]

We do ufsdumps at level 0 on mounted filesystems (but with Oracle shutdown) and I have never had a problem restoring the resulting save to our test box. Having a quick read through the man page, I can't see any reference to unmounting the filesystem to be dumped - I wouldn't have thought the dump could be made if you did. Are you thinking of the recommendation to go to single user for level 0 dumps. If so, we don't do that either! Others, however, might have different experiences.....

HTH.

 

[Annihilannic]

Agree with Ken on all points! Annihilannic.

 

[hornetbloke]

Weird, I had meant to write single user but had unmount in my head for some strange reason.
Thanks a lot for the info, that helps me out a lot.

 

[KenCunningham]

Strange that, King Charles I had a similar experience, but found his head unmounted before he could do anything about it ;-)

Glad to have helped.